WASHINGTON -- Do my eyes deceive me? The morning after Super
Tuesday expired with a burst of fireworks enhaloing the hunk of
granite that is John Kerry's head, Senator Hillary Clinton -- still
the most popular Democrat in the country -- pops up at Washington's
Mayflower Hotel to give a major speech on trade and manufacturing,
two burning issues during the Democrats' primary season. What can
this mean?
Several weeks back as Senator Kerry emerged as the frontrunner
for the Democratic nomination, that veteran Clinton-watcher with
the keen eye for political machinations, Dick Morris, announced
that Hillary had become a likely prospect as Kerry's running
mate.
Morris's observation makes sense. Kerry is a regional candidate.
Hillary has national reach. She is the most popular Democratic
candidate in the land. Owing to her feminism and to her cachet with
the other building blocks of the Democratic coalition she could, as
Morris puts it, turn the presidential campaign into a "national
crusade." Moreover, with the vast financial resources she commands,
she could be for Kerry's campaign what his wife has been for
Kerry's lifestyle, a bonanza.
What is more, sources have told me that Clinton loyalists have
been calling Democrats around the country telling them to prevail
on Kerry at least to invite Hillary to be on his ticket. Kerry
needs help. For most of his senatorial career he has been a loner,
and the source of too many bizarre utterances. As recently as
December his candidacy was dead in the water. Kerry has not been
the consensus Democratic candidate. Rather, he is the candidate the
consensus has settled on.
Hillary is at the center of the party. Some would say she sits
atop it. The Clintons' servitor, Terry McAuliffe, heads the
Democratic National Committee. Her political action committees are
prodigious fundraising mechanisms. Another of her servitors, Harold
Ickes, controls financial honey pots with reserves of over $100
million. Thus Hillary is the most likely source of prestige and
funding for the impecunious Kerry.
More recently, sources tell me that long-time Clinton supporters
including those in the now defunct Clark campaign have been told to
sit tight and await unfolding events as though "something big" is
about to happen. And Hillary's fund-raising operations have
curiously slowed. She has been the top Democratic fundraising draw
since 2000. But three months ago her fundraising appearances
seemingly fell off. In the last election cycle she did four to five
fundraisers a week. Now she is down to one or two.
With her early morning speech just after Super Tuesday she may
be approaching that "something big" that her old supporters have
been promised. In addressing trade and manufacturing at the
Mayflower on Wednesday she confronts two staples of Ralph Nader's
song and dance, a song and dance that will be heard many times as
his third party candidacy gets underway. Nader's candidacy could
become a political "giant sucking sound" of votes away from Kerry.
At the Mayflower Hillary demonstrates her political value to Kerry
as a neutralizer of Nader.
It makes perfect sense for Hillary to get into the Democratic
presidential action now. She has enormous power, and as with all
political power if you do not use it you run the risk that you
might lose it. Running as veep on a Kerry ticket might not doom her
to second fiddle for eight years. The trial might last only eight
months, and if the valiant ticket goes down to the hellish Bush she
would be seen as the loyalest of loyal Democrats, a Joan of Arc to
her party. Her rights on the presidential nomination in 2008 would
be secure.
Then too, some shocking revelations might surface about Senator
John Pierre Kerry before convention time. Things like that have
happened before in this Democratic race. Ask Dr. Howard Dean. Come
to think of it, ask Kerry. In that event, Hillary, the loyalest of
the loyal, would be there to lift the party from chaos and against
the Forces of Darkness. Whatever transpires, the Clintons are
active again.
topics:
Trade, Hillary Clinton, NATO
